


My Twenty-One

by piecesofalice



Category: Heroes - Fandom
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-02
Updated: 2010-01-02
Packaged: 2017-10-05 15:35:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 966
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/43235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/piecesofalice/pseuds/piecesofalice
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>For the vote_petrelli Fic-A-Thon, 2007.</p>
            </blockquote>





	My Twenty-One

**Author's Note:**

  * For [gossy16](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=gossy16).



\---

"If you walk under a ladder, it's bad luck."

  
Nathan looks at his brother, who's drawing a picture on the deck of the Petrelli sailboat.

  
"You're not supposed to be on the boat, Pete."

  
A shrug is his response, and Nathan crosses back under the ladder Peter had labeled with his supersitious nonsense.

  
"That's fourteen years bad luck, Nath."

  
Nathan goes under the ladder again, hops onto the dry-docked boat and sits next to his brother. "Twenty-one now. Gimme some paper."

  
And there they sit, both pretending not to think of their lives in twenty-one years while drawing castles and beaches and houses with square windows.

  
\---

  
Angela's eating a biscotti, sipping a cappuccino. They're at the holiday house off the Hamptons, her husband in the distance chatting up the neighbour's young, nubile wife. She ignores the blatant disregard of their wedding vows and concentrates, instead, on the skinny forms of her boys running from point A to point B, terrorising each other and playing war without even knowing what war is.

  
Nathan is stronger, more likely to get Peter in a headlock. He does so now, with a flip and a slide, and Peter shrieks out "Mama!" in a painful tone that sets her teeth on edge.

  
"Nathan!"

  
She drops her cup and it shatters on the deck as Peter's frame falls to the ground in a faint, no thanks to the air supply so helpfully cut off by his older brother. It was an accident, he pleaded with her, and she knew it was, but she can't bring herself to tend to Nathan's shame when her beautiful, baby boy needs her help.

  
His shame at knowing his own strength brings him to his brother's room later that night. As he offers Peter his share of dessert, his train set for a week and any of his books, Peter smiles and Nathan knows it was all fake, and - even though he was too young to know what it is - he's taken back by the anger that rises in his gullet.

  
"I hate you."

  
"No, you don't." And Peter points to the floor, where Nathan finds himself moving towards, and they begin to play like nothing happened.

  
\----

  
College isn't what he expected, but he's beginning to see nothing in life is. Lecture after lecture, paper after paper, only punctuated by the occasional bedding of some young freshwoman after a night of hardcore whisky chugging and beer bonging.

  
His fingers itch, tense and elongate with every moment he's forced to study law, but he continues because it's what is expected of him, and for this, his father keeps his bank account flushed and his connections current.

  
_The world is your motherfucking oyster, Petrelli._

  
It's not until he notices a pair of piercing blue eyes over a party that he's forced to finally fight for what he wants, and what he wants is Heidi.

  
She plays catch and kiss with him for months, her smile all teeth and promises. When he finally captures her, like the proverbial butterfly or something equally flowery, he proposes immediately in a bar, surrounded by their college mates and using a beer tap for a ring.

  
"Are you afraid to lose me, or something?" she laughs, from shock, from happiness.

  
He just smiles, because he doesn't want her to know the truth, even though she has just said it.

  
\---

  
Heidi holds out their baby, and life pulls into sharp focus.

  
His wife is tired, her mascara halfway down her face and the tiny boy in his arms is red and screwed up like a prune. Nathan has never seen two more beautiful people, and he breaths in the scent of new life while he's watched by the bluest eyes he'd ever spotted from across a party.

  
"Be a good kid, kid," he whispers to his heir, afraid of the years to come but so seized by joy that it really doesn't matter at all.

  
\----

  
The minute he knew he could fly was the minute his life slipped into auto pilot.

  
"Heidi."

  
He thought she was dead as the maddening traffic noises stopped registering.

  
"Heidi!"

  
He thought he was dead as his legs dangled over the freeway.

  
"Heidi..."

  
He thought he was living a charmed life, but like all fools who walk under ladders, he was living in a dreamland.

  
\----

  
He walked away from Linderman and back into the room where Niki had been left unconcious. She was there, her body wrapped in a finely cut suit and her blonde hair falling over her face, a part of twenty-one years bad luck despite making him happy for one night out of a thousand.

  
Nathan sat on the bed next to her. He allowed himself to cry, for five minutes and no longer, for an afternoon where he sat and drew on a sailboat and didn't know any better than what he knew now.

  
Wiping his face like he did when he was nine, he got up, covered Niki with a blanket and kissed her cheek, thinking of blue eyes over a party, his mother and his children - and knew, for once, exactly what to do.

  
\----

  
"If a seagull craps on you, it's good luck."

  
Nathan screws up his face at his brother, who's eyes are watching the loop-de-loop performed by the birds above them, and goes to say something smart and scathing in return about the balance of good and bad luck.

  
But he doesn't, because Peter wasn't afraid to fly, afraid to dream, afraid to make people feel better - and even Nathan couldn't take that away from him.

  
He draws his brother a picture of the two of them flying with the birds, and tells Peter sleep with it his under his pillow, for protection, for the next twenty-one years.

  
And he does.

  
\---

_Fin._

\---


End file.
